1. Field of Invention
The present apparatus relates generally to integrated thermal management structures and energy storage components. More specifically, the apparatus relates to an integrated architecture that provides electrical power and cooling to an on-structure electrical load.
2. Background Information
Electronics, such as radio frequency (RF) transmit/receive electronics, can be relatively inefficient, e.g., 15–25% at converting electrical energy to radiated power and therefore generate large amounts of heat. The electronics often do not have sufficient thermal mass to absorb this waste heat with consequential rapid junction rise and component failure. Traditional thermal management solutions to address this problem can add significant volume and complexity and can limit device miniaturization.
In addition, RF power amplifiers, such as those found in cellular telephones, web-enabled communication and personal data assistant (PDA) devices, and wireless broadband data link systems, can incur voltage droop during transmission. Voltage droop translates directly to a drop in microwave amplifier RF gain. Voltage droop can become more difficult to minimize as the RF power increases. To minimize voltage droop, existing capacitor technologies, such as traditional ceramic- and tantalum-based capacitors, are used to satisfy high power demands of amplifiers during a transmit pulse. The energy density of commercial ceramic-based and tantalum-based capacitors is adequate to support the full load pulse of microwave amplifiers that produce low RF energy using minimal DC input power. However, with higher power RF power amplifiers, the overall volume and weight increase when using existing capacitor technologies. In certain instances, there is insufficient volume to package these traditional capacitor technologies to provide adequate RF performance at higher power levels.